websense

This law suit against Target is amazing to me. What a shame.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m very much a proponent of accessible web design. As I would hope anyone who is serious about the web development business would be. Any web developer or development company who isn’t building sites this way yet, should be working hard and fast toward that goal. However, is the court room really the right place to effect change?

I personally believe that the market will prove to Target that they need to take their site seriously. Frankly, the inaccessibility of their site is probably the least of their worries, if it weren’t for the courts that is. Has anyone taken the time to notice that the average page is over 400K!. Should dial up users also start up a class action suit? How about they query strings in the URL? This site goes against almost every best practice there is. It is though; a free country. If they choose to turn away business by having a poorly built site; so be it.

Let other business, who choose to pay attention to the web, and build good sites that are accessible to all gain a little market share. What could be wrong with that?

Now that I have made the case for when a company should go with an official RFP for Web development projects, I am proud (and a bit relieved) to say that The Karcher Group is offering a sample Web development RFP that businesses can use. The sample can by found by clicking here. All you need to do is download the Word document, customize the text to fit your development project, and you are good to go. Please come back here once you have taken a look at it and leave me some feedback below to let me know if you found it useful and if you have any ideas on how to improve it.

There’s no doubt, Northeast Ohio isn’t exactly a hotbed of technology talent. That creates a real challenge for a growing Web Design firm. Finding new designers, CCS folks and programmers can be a real headache.

While we’re struggling to find enough new talent, the kids that do have some talent and graduate college are heading to one of the coasts or Chicago because they believe that’s the only place they can find a job. Either that or they’re only interested in designing gaming software, in which case we can’t use them anyways. This situation has been dubbed the brain drain. Fortunately our area chambers and some other local businesses are working hard to both keep these kids here, and retrain those who may be ready for a new field.

To do our part, we’ve kicked off the TKG Instititue, which is web development training for young adults that are ready (or almost ready) to enter the workforce, but need some experience in web design or development. Our goal is to grow some talent in our market to first and foremost, serve the kids who take advantage of it, secondly build a workforce for our business and others in the area who need people with these skill sets.

Geoff recently wrote in this very blog about the shortcomings of submitting a Request For Proposal for Web development, and in fact strongly recommended against it. This of course scared me more than a little as part of my job is to reply to RFP’s, and Geoff is of course our owner. If he submits a new entry stating that my office would perhaps look better empty, I might weep openly. Again. So I thought it might be a good idea to help justify my continued employment by outlining the type of situation where an RFP can be a useful project tool.

Defining our Terms – Project Proposal Stages

Generating an accurate project proposal has two distinct stages. The first stage is Project Discovery, where the goals, specific functions and budget of the Web project are determined. The second stage is Proposal Development (aka the “Phil Phase”, but I’m still waiting for that to become official industry jargon) where a proposal is prepared that outlines the entire project in detail and gives the cost to develop each piece. This brings us to the big questions to see if a Web development RFP is appropriate:

When to Submit an RFP - Which stage are you in?

Not completing the Project Discovery stage makes for a bad RFP, and trying to respond to a bad RFP is like trying to build a house using a child’s drawing. Two windows and a door can do, but I highly doubt that this is all you wanted for your project. But shouldn’t an experienced Web firm such as ourselves know the industry and our own capabilities and be able to help you develop a project outline based on your needs and market? Yes we do and yes we can, and please by all means call us, but don’t ruin your week and mine trying an RFP. You have to finish off your Project Discovery stage to get anything detailed enough for us to tell you what it will take to actually make the thing.

So, for the attention-challenged:

Submit and RFP If - You have completed the Project Discovery stage and established the goals and functionality for the site. If the picture of the project isn’t that clear for you yet, please follow the steps that Geoff laid out in his entry. If you have a good understanding of your needs, a strong summary of your project and would like to get a bunch of proposals for it, submit away.

Do not submit an RFP if - You are not ready to clearly quantify what the site should do and how it should work. “I would like to improve communication with our clients through the site” is not a statement, it is a full-blown conversation. Call us and talk through your needs, goals and potential site users.

Oh, and please do not go the RFP route if you are looking for SEO. Optimization is too market-specific and goals are too varied – please see above regarding us and a phone call.

That’s it for me, other than to point out that I am generally a nice guy that people like having around, and I believe we should fully explore my phone-answering skills before letting me go if the RFP’s stop coming in.

Now Available! Check out The Karcher Group’s sample development RFP by clicking here

Ok, something that drives me crazy. RFPs for web development.

Honestly, they make no sense at all. Don’t get me wrong, we get tons of them, and reply to every one, but at the end of the day; are they really serving the company that sent them out? Nope. Here’s why I say this:

What does an RFP accomplish:

• It demonstrates the creative writing skills of the author
• It consumes time writing about and requesting services that the author usually knows little about

What doesn’t an RFP accomplish:

• It doesn’t allow you to get to know the people you might be working with
• It doesn’t allow their expertise to influence the quality of the project you are requesting
• It doesn’t allow the creativity of the “vendor” to influence your decision/project

Developing a website of any significant size or scope isn’t going to be addressed effectively in an RFP. It just can’t be done. As I mentioned, we see a ton of them and almost none of them that come in add any real value for the person who sent it. Most often, they are requesting old technology, wrong technology, or even things that just don’t exist. Why? Because the read about it somewhere or cut and pasted it from something they grabbed off the web because their boss told them to put out an RFP.

If you’re charged with getting your company’s website developed and selecting a vendor, I suggest you do the following things:

Identify possible vendors by: searching the web, asking friends/colleagues, contacting developers of sites you’ve used and found to be well built.

Look at their work, not just their portfolio. Ask them for more clients that aren’t posted on their site. Don’t just browse the sites, but see how well they rank in the search engines, see how long it takes them to load, if they are e-commerce, try and get through the checkout process. If you get confused during the process, think twice, or at least ask the vendor some good hard questions.

Call their customers. Not just the ones they give you, but identify some of their customers and call them without permission.

Once you’ve seen some work you’re impressed with and talked with their customers, spend some time and get to know the vendor. If they are doing their job right, you’re going to have to work with them a lot, so get to know them and their company, and let them get to know you. They’ll be able to do the best job for you by knowing you and knowing your goals, not by reading an RFP that you dreaded putting together anyways.

If you’ve found yourself in an organization that requires the RFP process, fine. Find yourself a vendor you like and trust and see if they’ll help you put it together. I know they’re a necessary evil sometimes.

The main point is, don’t make decisions based on a piece of paper. Get to know the people you’re going to work with.